


Death by Drowning

by Orchidae



Category: Downton Abbey
Genre: 1939, Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Childhood Memories, Childhood Trauma, Gen, Implied/Referenced Suicide, M/M, References to Depression, Suicide Attempt, Thomas Barrow being a surrogate dad, World War II
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-26
Updated: 2020-06-26
Packaged: 2021-03-04 00:41:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,037
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24934705
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Orchidae/pseuds/Orchidae
Summary: George’s mind was suddenly flooded with the memory of being very small and his mother telling him that Barrow was ill and that they should bring him a ‘get well’ present.
Relationships: George Crawley/Original Male Character(s), Thomas Barrow & George Crawley
Comments: 6
Kudos: 153





	Death by Drowning

**Author's Note:**

> I dunno, this is a real downer of a story. I'm putting it down as a oneshot for now, but might add to it later if people are interested.

Summer 1939

George woke up in a hospital in Windsor. He supposed he was awake as he imagined that whatever afterlife he was destined for would be more interesting than pale grey walls and a stucco ceiling. Perhaps this was hell, and he was destined to be tormented by boredom for all eternity. He felt a presence next to him and groggily turned his head. Instead of being faced by some devil, he was met with Barrow, sitting in an uncomfortable-looking polyvinyl armchair and reading a newspaper.

He was wearing his civvies, a navy chalk stripe suit, his tweed overcoat and fedora hanging from a coat hook by the door. He had owned that suit since George was a boy, and it was impressive that he could still fit into it. He had altered it slightly to keep up with the current fashions for padded shoulders and slim waistlines. It gave him the appearance of a much younger man, dressing as fashionably as he did, looking more like a stockbroker than a butler. The suit reminded George of days out at the fair, where Barrow would buy him and his cousins bottles of lemonade and bags of sweets and show them how to beat the carnival games. It reminded him of following the other man to the village on his errands when he really should have been in the nursery. As they walked, Barrow would tell him stories about an evil Duke who planned to trick a princess into marrying him and a handsome prince who lost his sight and his kingdom. Eventually, George would grow tired with walking on the way back and insist on being carried the rest of the way home and, to his credit, Barrow would give him a piggyback no matter what unwieldy parcel he had to carry.

“Barrow?” George croaked, his voice thick with sleep. Barrow startled and dropped his paper.

“Master George, you’re awake.”

“Where are we?”

“We’re in the hospital. You gave me quite the scare. How do you feel?”

“My chest hurts.”

“Of course, it does, they had to drain your lungs.”

“Oh.” He was still alive. He didn’t know whether to be relieved or devasted. For a moment he wondered why no one else had come to see him, but quickly remembered that his family were all in New York. When his great-grandmother had finally kicked the bucket, well into her nineties, uncle Harold had dealt with the loss and confronting his own mortality by immediately marrying a twenty-two-year-old department store heiress in what would be the biggest society wedding of the season. Nobody approved, and yet everyone had gone except him and Sybbie, who was busy reading medicine at Edinburgh. Perhaps they had decided to attend out of morbid curiosity or the promise of the distraction of an extravagant party in increasingly dark times.

“I’ve had to telephone his Lordship.” Barrow explained, “Your mother and sister, and Mr Talbot will be returning to England at the next available opportunity.”

“No!” George gasped, the shame of his family finding out was too much. They would be so hurt by it. “No, that isn’t necessary, Barrow. I’ll talk to them later and tell them they needn’t bother.”

“As you wish, sir,” Barrow said, although he didn’t look convinced. “I’m afraid the police will want to speak with you, about the incident.”

“Will they?”

“A young man is dead, Master George. They’ll be holding an inquest.”

He knew Ashbury was dead. He had watched helplessly as the other boy had slipped away from him in the water and the current had dragged him farther and farther away and knew that he was the only one who had come back, but he hadn’t quite believed it until Barrow had said it out loud.

“Oh,” he sighed.

“Is that all you have to say for yourself?”

“It was an accident.”

“Like hell it was,” the older man snarled, “There were stones in your pockets. You wrote a bloody note. Thank heavens you sent it to me and didn’t leave it out for anyone to find. Do you have any idea how frightened I was getting that letter? I was halfway out the door to go and find you when the hospital rang.” Yes, he had addressed the letter to Barrow, knowing the house would be empty, and feeling that Barrow had as much of a right to read it as his family did.

“I’m sorry.”

“Was it his idea or yours?”

“What difference does that make?” George cried, “We both wanted to.”

“The difference is that you’re alive and he’s gone forever,” Barrow said. “His parents and the police are going to want to know what happened. If this gets out, they might have a case for manslaughter.” George burst into tears at that. Barrow had rarely disciplined him as a child, but he had a way of making him feel his disappointment more acutely than anyone else. His grandfather was all bluster, but ultimately a pushover and Henry was never happy with him, so his scolding felt meaningless. Mother came close, all cutting remarks and icy silences when she was upset with him, but she was like that at the best of times. Barrow would tell him why he had done something wrong, how he had hurt someone and ask how he would feel if someone had done the same to him.

“It was his idea,” George confessed. “But I still went along with it. Everything felt so hopeless. It was almost as though he was thinking what I was thinking.”

“There now,” Barrow said softly, “What happened? Were the other boys picking on you?” George shook his head. If only it were as simple as that. The summer term was almost over, and they would have all moved on to university and to different lives, never having to see their schoolmates again. Of course, that was easier said than done in their circles.

The truth was he had always been prone to black moods, as though his mother had passed them down to him like an inheritance. His life had been filled with expectations he neither wanted nor could he fulfil. Then he had met Stephen Ashbury and his feelings had finally made sense. They had been inseparable, a folie à deux, their relationship a mess of infatuation, alcohol, and existential nihilism.

He couldn’t tell Barrow any of this. Nor could he tell him that he had been drinking regularly in secret since he was ten, first by stealing swigs from discarded glasses at his parent’s parties, then by stealing from his grandfather’s decanters. The wine cellar was out of the question since Barrow kept an impeccable inventory, but nobody noticed if the drinks cabinet in the library needed its spirits replaced more often. It was one of the few things that made him feel something, and if it made him act out then that was just the price he had to pay. If his family noticed, they didn’t say anything.

“Well, what then? You know you can tell me anything.” Barrow pressed. There was no way he was getting out of this.

“It just felt as though, if we couldn’t be together then what was the point in carrying on,” George confessed. He couldn’t bring himself to write it in the letter, it was too shameful.

“Well, you wouldn’t be the first to feel that way,” Barrow said. To George’s surprise, he shrugged his jacket off and unbuttoned the cuffs of his shirtsleeves to reveal pale white scars starting from his wrists and ending almost at the inside of his elbows. George’s mind was suddenly flooded with the memory of being very small and his mother telling him that Barrow was ill and that they should bring him a ‘get well’ present. He had clutched an orange in his tiny hands as they had climbed the stairs because oranges had vitamins in them that were good for when you were sick. Barrow had said he was getting better, but he looked so small in a bed that was not much bigger than George’s bed in the nursery and wearing striped flannel pyjamas that looked like George’s pyjamas. His skin looked as grey as the statues in the graveyard where his father was buried. Then before he knew it, Barrow had left and Henry had moved in, and George had never been the same again.

“Listen,” Barrow said, rolling down his sleeves again, “We’ll tell them you were skipping stones or something, down by the river, when he fell in. You jumped in after him but couldn’t save him.”

“What?” George gasped in shock. Barrow seemed to have a sixth sense for when he was lying and gave him hell about it. It just seemed so unlike him to suggest that they lie now. But he had lied to him back then as well, to spare him the horror of what had happened, but George had known something was wrong all the same. In his child’s mind, he had thought that he had hurt Barrow. Everyone was telling him he was getting too big for piggy-back rides. For the longest time, right up until he had come back, he had believed _he_ was the reason Barrow had left.

“Son, nothing’s going to be gained by telling the truth.” Barrow said, “If his family find out, they’ll drive themselves mad trying to understand why he did it. We’ll destroy the letter and tell the family the same thing and with any luck that will be the end of it.” he sighed, “But if you do anything like this again, I’ll go straight to Lady Mary and Mr Talbot. And if you actually succeed in offing yourself, I’ll follow you straight to hell and drag you out by the scruff of your neck. And if the devil has a problem with that, I’ll kick his head in. Do you understand?”

“Yes,”

“Good,”

*

Autumn 1939

“I haven’t come to this decision lightly.” Master George said, “It’s the right thing to do.”

Thomas had taken the boy home to Downton after he had been discharged from the hospital. There had only been a week left of term and he was not in any state to be attending school. The family would not be dissuaded about coming home, even after it was clear the young master would make a full recovery and they arrived the following week on the Queen Mary. In some ways, Thomas wished they hadn’t come. Master George had begun to open up about his troubles as Thomas nursed him back to health, but now they were bound by a lie and could no longer talk now that Lady Mary had insisted on taking care of him. The presence of his family had made him retreat into himself, and Thomas began to regret his decision to cover everything up. Thomas didn’t trust insane asylums, people who went into those places rarely came out again, but perhaps it was different for the upper classes, like a restorative holiday. Now three months had passed without incident until Master George came into the butler’s pantry and announced that he was going to join up.

“You don’t know what you’re talking about.” Thomas said bitterly, “You’ll never know what war is until you get there and by then it’ll be too late. And what about Oxford?”

“What about it? I’ll just drift around with no purpose or merit. This is different. This could…this could be the making of me.”

“Your mother will never forgive you.” Thomas pointed out.

“Mother can’t tell me what to do anymore, now that I’m eighteen.” George said, “I know what you’re thinking. You think I’m going because I have some sort of death wish. Maybe I do, but this is bigger than all of us. You must understand. You joined Kitchener’s Army!”

“I had my reasons.” Thomas retorted. George didn't know he had joined up to avoid being dismissed.

“And I have mine.”

“I’m not happy about it, but I can’t exactly stop you,” Thomas grumbled, “But if anything happens to you, I’ll go over there myself and kick Mr Hitler’s head in.”

“I wouldn’t expect anything less, Barrow.” 


End file.
